“Like pulling teeth”: The song Eddie Van Halen forced Sammy Hagar to sing
It’s never easy to bring a classic song to life. While it’s often said that a song is good if it can be played on just a guitar or piano, there’s a lot more production magic a band has to weave before it resonates with the rest of the world as a hit.
Although Eddie Van Halen had a knack for writing phenomenal rock tunes effortlessly, he admitted that getting Sammy Hagar to lay down the vocals for Right Now was a nightmare. Despite Van Halen’s musical prowess, the process of turning that raw material into a finished product wasn’t always smooth.
Looking at the way that Van Halen was constructed, though, Hagar and David Lee Roth were both a lot more important than most people thought. Since Van Halen III had no sense of creative direction throughout its runtime, people started to realise that ‘The Red Rocker’ and ‘Diamond Dave’ had both dictated the style and the structure of the tunes whenever they were in the group, which generally meant turning Eddie’s licks into songs.
That’s not to say that Eddie couldn’t develop badass tunes on his own. They might only be a few minutes long, but his instrumental interlude tracks like ‘Eruption’ and ‘Spanish Fly’ have as many hooks as their mainline songs, so it wasn’t like he didn’t understand what a major smash sounded like.
But even by the group’s standards for dad rock with Hagar, ‘Right Now’ was a bit of an odd beast. Since they had reconvened with original producer Ted Templeman, hearing them going back to the sound of massive keyboards may not have sat well with someone working with one of the greatest guitarists of his time.
Part of what made the song unusual was how far it leaned into atmosphere rather than flash. Eddie’s opening piano figure sets the emotional tone long before the guitar enters the picture, building a sense of anticipation that feels almost cinematic. For a guitarist famous for redefining the instrument, choosing to let a piano line carry the song’s identity showed just how willing he was to follow whatever idea served the music best.
That decision also placed a heavier burden on Hagar to sell the track vocally. Without a barrage of riffs dominating the arrangement, the song lives or dies on the strength of its melody and message. When it finally clicked, the result was a soaring power ballad that balanced Eddie’s musical ambition with the kind of universal sentiment that could connect far beyond the band’s usual hard rock audience.
If you put down the shred blinders for a second, though, the song’s melody is absolutely immaculate. Yes, it’s beyond cheesy to look back on now, but purely as a piece of music, the way that Hagar delivers a tune about living for the moment and not letting anything slip away is still enough to tug on a few heartstrings.
It’s just a shame that Eddie had to spend a lot of time convincing Hagar to sing it properly, telling Forbes, “Alex and I tracked the whole thing, certain people didn’t want to be a part of it, then it wins a Grammy and a MTV Award for Video of the Year, and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Hey yeah, great.’ But it was like pulling teeth to get the person to sing the damn song. And there are certain things that I fight for because I do write all the music, so I think I have a little bit of say in how things should go.”
At the same time, it wasn’t like Eddie didn’t step over the line now and then, either. As much as the tune ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’ beats out almost anything else on Balance, making Hagar change the lyrics to a tribute song about Kurt Cobain because they needed more attitude doesn’t make sense at all.
Still, it’s not like anyone’s here arguing about the songwriting capabilities of Eddie Van Halen. The man was a living rock and roll genius, and despite being taken from us way too soon, ‘Right Now’ is up there with ‘Panama’ and ‘Ain’t Talkin Bout Love’ as one of his finest musical pieces.
